Microsoft says services fully restored after hourslong global outage
[November 14, 2026]
Microsoft said Saturday that services were fully restored after a
massive outage that lasted for hours.
“We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the
incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and
regions,” the company said in an update on X.
Users reported that Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams and
AI assistant Copilot, were interrupted. Downdetector, an online tracker,
said it received outage reports from users in more than 70 countries and
territories.
The outage affected governments, courts, healthcare services,
businesses, airlines and banks in many places. Governments including
those of Japan, Singapore and Australia reported that the hourslong
episode had impacted some of their operations.
Over 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft said on its
website. Problems started appearing around midday Thursday in the U.S.
The Redmond, Washington-based company apologized on Friday for the
disruptions and said the outage was “not related to cyber” or artificial
intelligence agents.
It said the incident “was introduced by an issue during an earlier
network capacity upgrade that surfaced” following a recent network
change.
The disruptions offer the latest example of the cascading problems that
can erupt when so many communications and technology platforms depend on
the same provider. Some lawmakers outside the U.S. have also argued that
the outage shows the consequences of overreliance on American tech.
“With no emails coming or going, many office workers feel like they are
having a virtual snow day,” said Jeremy Singer, a professor at the
University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science.
Still, he added, “this problem serves to emphasize the dependence we
have built on one company’s digital infrastructure, and may lead us to
question whether we need more resilience in our IT ecosystem.”
The global reach of the outage was swift. After problems first emerged
midday Thursday in the U.S., online tracker Downdetector said it
received outage reports from 74 countries and territories within an
hour.
The total number of people affected was not clear, but Microsoft said in
January it had more than 450 million paid commercial subscriptions to
its 365 services.
Microsoft scrambled to recover services
A series of posts by Microsoft 365 on X suggested its engineers
struggled to get the problem under control for some time, drawing
teasing from other companies and users alike. But the tech giant has
said there is “no indication” that the disruptions were caused by
malicious activity, specifically noting Friday that the outage was not
related to a cyberattack or artificial intelligence agents.
Microsoft said a technical issue arose during an upgrade that followed
“a recent network change.” The company added that it restored services
gradually, which took longer.
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A Microsoft logo and sign outside the Microsoft Visitor Center are
seen at the company's headquarters Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Redmond,
Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)
 As Microsoft addressed issues
affecting its Exchange Online mailboxes, it earlier cited a failure
that it said caused a number of its servers to be “unexpectedly
unavailable” during automated checks.
For Outlook, many users said they couldn’t send or
receive emails, or had trouble loading their inboxes altogether.
Those problems piled up across much of the world into Friday.
Disruptions piled up from the courtroom to the pharmacy
In Britain, the outage brought a halt to a trial in Manchester.
Judge Maurice Greene sent jurors home because of delays that he said
illustrated the danger of the court’s reliance on technology.
The British government said it was “working closely” with Microsoft
to assess any impact on public services but that “robust contingency
plans” were in place to minimize disruption.
British police said they were unable to receive crime reports online
and urged people to phone in urgent requests. The outage also
affected some law enforcement in the U.S. The sheriff’s office in
Colorado’s Arapahoe County, for example, noted that online bond
payments were affected.
Also in Britain, the National Pharmacy Association warned customers
of delays in getting medication. The outage affected the National
Health Service and threatened to prevent doctors from emailing
prescriptions to pharmacies.
“Please bear with your pharmacy teams today, where waits may be
longer than normal and there may be delays to some prescriptions,” a
spokesperson said.
Governments in Singapore, Japan, Greece and Norway said the outage
affected some of their operations, including email communications
for certain ministries or agencies.
And of course, businesses were wracked with disruptions. Hong Kong
businessperson Danny Lau, who runs an aluminum company, said his
business couldn’t receive updates from its U.S. customers through
Outlook.
Some banks in Hong Kong, an Asian financial hub, also saw
disruptions.
OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems connecting with Microsoft 365
tools, underscoring the ripple effects as more people use artificial
intelligence platforms to interact with other companies’ software.
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